Bharti GGC Vijaya Sampath joins Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan to head their Corporate Practice

Vijaya Sampath has joined Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan as Senior Partner and will be heading the firm’s corporate practice. Vijaya will be based in the Delhi office but will work across all offices in India to look after the firm’s corporate practice..Prior to joining the firm, Vijaya was acting as the Chief Advisor to the Chairman and Group CEO of Bharti. Till June 2011, Vijaya was the Group General Counsel at Bharti. She has more than 30 years of legal experience and has worked both as a Partner in a law firm and as an in-house Legal Counsel..Vijaya is a graduate of the University of Mysore and started her career with a mid-sized Indian entrepreneurial firm in Kolkata. She has also worked with the Canada-based MNC, Alcan. She was a representative of Alcan on the Board of its subsidiary, Indian Aluminum for a short while. Prior to joining Bharti, Vijaya was a senior partner at J. Sagar Associates..Vijaya is a highly acclaimed expert in corporate law. She has successfully led in-house teams in complex joint ventures, cross border acquisitions, PE investments, financing arrangements and international commercial arrangements, providing high-end litigation strategy as well as legal advice..Speaking to Bar & Bench Vijaya said,.“Law has always been a subject of great interest to me. I have been with Bharti for nine years and I continue to share a great relationship with them”..On the decision to move back to law firm, Vijaya said,.“My core interest is law. I have done corporate law for nine years on the business side of it. So I thought it would be a great opportunity to work on the law firm side, where I can bring my business skills, my commercial understanding and how companies look at contracts, joint ventures or M&A transactions from the legal side. I thought it would be a good value addition”..Vijaya will continue to act as the Ombudsman and Advisor to Group Chairman and CEO of the Bharti group..Lakshmikumaran Partner Badri Narayanan informed Bar & Bench that they have recently set up a second office in Delhi in Jungpura which has a capacity to accomodate 150-200 lawyers. The tax, litigation and advisory practice teams are based in the new office while the Safdarjung office will cater to the corporate and IPR practice teams..This takes the total number of partners at the firm to 33..Bar & Bench had earlier spoken to Vijaya Sampath on initial years of her career, the differences between working in a law firm and as in-house counsel, her role as GGC, the evolving position of in-house-counsel, work culture at Bharti and her future plans.